Mickey McGuire

Since no teams have been eliminated from the postseason today (yet, at least), I don't have anything to update with the playoff bracket, but anticipate that I will have an update coming tomorrow.

To tide you over, here is an autograph that I have been trying to add to my collection for a very long time. Mickey was the last living Oriole who I did not have an autograph of, and I'm very happy to finally scratch his name off of my need list. He is featured on a card in the Orioles Crown set, so technically I could one day upgrade to that, but considering any autograph of his took so long to find, I'm not overly optimistic.

Mickey was a middle infielder who played two short stints in Baltimore; six games in 1962 and 10 games in 1967. He had 21 at-bats over those 16 games and he had four hits (all singles), two runs, two RBI and two strikeouts. He never played another Major League game and spent most of his professional career as a minor leaguer. Over thirteen seasons in the minors, he played in over 1500 games for the Orioles, Angels, and White Sox farm systems.

I'm not exactly sure why Mickey's autograph is so hard to track down, but would guess that it has something to do with a lack of supply or demand. I speculate that Mickey must not be a fan of signing, and also that not too many people are trying to add his signature to their collections. I have seen one multi-signed item on eBay that included Mickey's autograph on it, but was outbid on it.

Mickey's autograph is pretty clean and legible and I really like the flourish that he gives both of his M's. I obtained this signed index card from a fellow Orioles collector on Sportscollectors.Net and have to thank my dad for the birthday money that paid for it, thanks dad!